In the annals of congressional oratory, it didn’t rival Sen. Rand Paul’s 13-hour filibuster in March over drone policy. But last Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse marked a major milestone of his...

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Posted Nov. 17, 2013 @ 12:01 am

In the annals of congressional oratory, it didn’t rival Sen. Rand Paul’s 13-hour filibuster in March over drone policy. But last Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse marked a major milestone of his own — and one welcomed by environmentalists — when he delivered his 50th weekly address on climate change from the Senate floor.

Whitehouse gave his first “Time to Wake Up” address in April 2012. He has returned to the floor every week the Senate is in session to stand before C-Span cameras and shine the spotlight on an issue he says has been alarmingly neglected.

“I am here for the 50th time to urge my colleagues to wake up to what carbon pollution is doing to our atmosphere and our oceans,” he said at the outset of his speech. “Why do I do this? First because it’s real, it’s very real, it’s happening.”

He then turned to charts at his side to present evidence of increases in Earth’s surface temperatures.

In an interview before his speech, Whitehouse explained what motivated him a year and a half ago to launch the approximately 15-minute climate talks.

“I wanted to raise the profile of climate change. We had basically stopped talking about it and the climate-change deniers’ point of view really doesn’t last very well in the daylight,” he said. “It shrivels up under scrutiny. It does better in the dark and we were, I thought, cooperating by allowing the dark to shroud the issue.

“I wanted to raise its profile in the Senate, raise its profile in the [Democratic] caucus and let people out there who are concerned about what’s going on know that we haven’t lost interest, that they shouldn’t write off the Senate.”

In his speeches, Whitehouse stridently criticizes Republican stalwarts for staunchly blocking progress on climate-change prevention and adaptation and for short-sightedly protecting polluters. He has tackled such topics as coal power plants, Hurricane Sandy, climate myths and climate impacts on the fishing industry.

“It is plain old-fashioned wrong when people lie and trick other people … It’s worse when there is money behind the trickery,” he said in his 50th speech. “There isn’t just lying going on. There’s a whole carefully built apparatus, phony-baloney organizations designed to look and sound like they are real, messages honed by public relations experts to sound like they are true, payroll scientists whom polluters can trot out when they need them.”

Along with his work as co-chair of the Bicameral Task Force on Climate Change, the weekly addresses have helped cement the second-term Democrat’s reputation as a leader on the issue.

In June, for example, former Vice President Al Gore, perhaps the highest-profile name in the country when it comes to climate change, accepted an invitation from the senator to address his annual gathering of Rhode Island energy and environmental leaders. At the gathering in Washington, the former vice president, the subject of the film “An Inconvenient Truth,” called Whitehouse the “leading U.S. Senate advocate for solving the climate crisis.”

Whitehouse has also been invited on news shows, including appearance on MSNBC’s “All in with Chris Hayes.” Some media turn to him for interviews, including a recent article in the Boston Globe on his take on a prominent climate-change denier.

Whitehouse acknowledges that his congressional colleagues, some of whom have joined him in giving the speeches, are taking notice of his work. Others are, too. But he said it’s not about him.

It’s about persuading people to do something about climate change, he says.

“It’s more that the profile is growing; it’s not so much about me,” he said. “I think there’s a very big appetite for people who think this is real and serious and want the Senate to get real and serious. So when they see me doing this, they think, ‘At last!’”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, he says, has remarked on his work and now talks more about addressing climate change.

“When you have the Senate majority leader talking about how important it is that we get something done on this when it wasn’t an issue he talked about much beforehand, that alone is a pretty big step,” he said.

He has no plans to give up on the speeches.

“It would be nice if that kind of effort was not required, but that’s Washington these days,” he said.